Will Viewers Be Turned Off By YouTube?
I was recently perusing YouTube’s “Featured Videos” section when I came across a video entitled “Bride Has Massive Hair Wig Out.” The title caught my attention immediately, so I decided to click on the play button. For those of you who haven’t seen the video, let me provide a brief synopsis: A bride has a nervous breakdown after a trip to the salon and cuts off her hair just hours before the wedding. After watching the video, I found myself feeling sorry for the troubled bride only to find out days later that it was all a hoax! A phony video posted on YouTube- I never would have guessed (insert sarcasm).
It seems that more and more fake videos are being posted on YouTube everyday. Aspiring actors and musicians are using sites like YouTube as a platform to showcase their talent and gain exposure with industry leaders. I’m sure most of you are familiar with Lonely Girl 15. Jessica Rose, a 19-year-old aspiring actress, along with 3 aspiring scriptwriters who wanted to break into the entertainment industry, leveraged YouTube to get publicity. When the truth came out that Lonely Girl 15 was a fake, there were a lot of angry fans who felt they had been betrayed.
Actors and musicians aren’t the only ones creating phony videos for attention. Essentially, anyone with a video camera and a YouTube account has the capabilities to post content. If this many phony videos exist now when users are not getting paid, what would happen if YouTube decided to pay its users? Well, we should soon find out. Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, co-founders of YouTube, recently announced the website will begin sharing revenue with its users. Hurley and Chen believe that YouTube is now large enough where they can encourage creativity through the implementation of revenue sharing.
Here’s the question I would like to open up for discussion- is this initiative a smart move for YouTube? I’m sure revenue sharing will gain the website more popularity (not that they need it- 70 million videos are downloaded everyday!), but let’s think about the site’s credibility for a minute. When YouTube was created in 2005, Hurley and Chen did not partake in revenue sharing for a reason; they wanted to build a community of video lovers and felt revenue sharing would attract those just interested in making money. So why now, two years later, is YouTube changing its outlook? Is YouTube “selling out” and turning its back on their core audience base?
I believe that revenue sharing is going to hurt YouTube. The website will no longer be an online community for video lovers, but rather an online community for people wanting to make money. While I do agree that YouTube is more of an entertainment site than anything else, the bottom line is that people are going to get bored with watching fake videos. Once I found out the “Bride Wigs Out” video was a hoax, I immediately lost all interest. Not to mention, I consistently question the validity of any video I see on YouTube now.
Because I’m an optimist at heart, not to mention a huge YouTube fan, I’m going to play devil’s advocate. Maybe revenue sharing will end up being an extremely successful tactic for YouTube. I talked a lot about fake videos and the negative effects they have. Some of you may, and probably do, disagree with this stance. Afterall, Jessica Rose, also known as Lonely Girl 15, was recently named Forbes top web celebrity. Think about that for a second. An aspiring actress fools the world into thinking she is a 16-year-old lonely American teenager through her daily weblogs and she is named top web celebrity of the year. This says something about the direction online videos are going in.
The bottom line is that when Google recently acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion, they needed to find a way to generate revenue somehow. Sharing advertising revenue with consumers is definitely a unique way to do that. Whether or not this decision is going to hurt or help YouTube I’m not really sure. I guess only time will tell. Now it’s your turn to talk. Let me know what you think!
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